So, feedback. This has been posted in the order that entries were submitted.
@kingshark – I really liked the second sector of your lap. Everything from the old hairpin (at the route marker E86) through to the one-kilometre marker was great. However, I thought that parts of the circuit were simply too twisty. If you had smoothed them out a little – there are no houses nearby, so you would have been free to do anything you liked – and maybe done something a little different with the two corners at the five-kilometre marker, I think you would have created something true to the spirit of Spa and would have stood a good chance at winning.
@browny – I have to be honest: I didn’t like your circuit. The basic shape was fine, but I think you stuck to the existing roads too much, and so the circuit lacked that creative x-factor that would make me go “wow!”. Also, I really didn’t like that double-hairpin at the two-kilometre mark. Especially since the next corner was also a hairpin.
@sam3110 – I liked your circuit; I think you probably placed third for this round. I especially liked the way you used the Route du Circuit to get some sweeping corners going, but you also stuck to the existing roads too much. There was a lot of potential for creativite between the first- and fourth-kilometre markers, so I was a little disappointed that you didn’t try something new there.
@brickles – This might sound a bit odd, but I think your circuit suffers from having too much flow. It would be fantastic for older cars from the 1960s and 1970s, but I don’t think the cars of 2013 would be able to follow one another very closely, and the aerodynamic grip would take a lot of the challenge out of the corners. But I was very happy to see that you created something new instad of sticking to the existing roads exclusively.
@roblo97 – I’m afraid I’m not feeling it. I like the basic shape of the circuit, and if I zoom out a few times, it’s fine. But everything from the third-kilometre marker to the finish line is dominated by corners that just don’t seem necessary, and so I found it a little lacking in soul. And I’m not sure what you were thinking with that sharp little chicane just before the six-kilometre marker. Since I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, I didn’t mark you down for it. But I thikn you squandered a lot of the potential that you set up in the first half of the lap with a disappointing back half.
@joao-pedro-cq – Your circuit is almost identical to Browny’s, so there is not much that I can say that I haven’t said before.
@npf1 – I like the way you used parts of the old circuit that nobody else did, but I don’t think you captured the spirit of Spa. I didn’t like the back-and-forth section around the third-kilometre marker, and the new bus stop-style chicane did nothing for me. If you had gone down to Chemin des Portiers and up the Route du Circuit to the Route de Spa, I think it would have been considerably better.
@pezlo2013 – I haven’t been following this thread too closely until recently, so I’m not sure if this is your first entry or not. If it is, I think it’s a great effort. But I do think you can work on balancing your designs out a little bit. It’s either fast and flowing or tight and twisty, and there is no middle ground. And I also think you should work on creating something new, rather than taking parts of existing circuits and stitching them together to create a “Greatest Hits” version.
@andae23 – And now for our winner. I didn’t like your circuit at all to begin with, because I thought it was far too short. But the more I looked at it and began to wonder what it would be like if it was scaled up to be 6.5km long, the more I realised that you had captured the spirit of Spa. That you had done it by making the circuit significantly shorter than anything that has ever been at Spa impressed me more. All of your corners look challenging, and you have created new roads for it, so I never felt that you had simply put something in to connect one part of the circuit to another. And I hope I’m right in saying this, but it feels like something you got right on the first draft; you didn’t overthink it and spend too long trying to create the perfect corners. The flow of the circuit feels like it comes from the flow of just drawing a line and seeing where it takes you, which I really like.
@matt90 – You came oh-so-close to winning this round. I like the shape and the feel, and I like the way you treated the existing roads as a guide, rather than following them religiously (case in point, the left-hander coming onto the Route de Spa at the end of the lap). Many of the things I said about andae’s circuit – particularly about not over-thinking it – are true about your design, but that chicane at the six kilometre mark really let you down. I wanted to believe that it was just the software following a funny route (as it sometimes does), but when I started undoing the points, I came to the inclusion that you put it in intentionally, and that’s what robbed you of the round win (if not, I’m sorry, but I didn’t have time to confer with anyone).
